Deep Rising (1998)

A group of heavily armed hijackers board a luxury ocean liner in the South Pacific Ocean to loot it, only to do battle with a series of large-sized, tentacled, man-eating sea creatures who have taken over the ship first. 

Deep Rising is a 1998 American action horror film directed by Stephen Sommers and starring Treat Williams, Famke Janssen and Anthony Heald.  It's silly, cliché-heavy, and utterly predictable.  I would consider this to be what I call a "popcorn movie".  It's mindless entertainment.  This movie is stupid as hell, but it knows it, and just wants to take us along on its stupid ride.

The movie has mercenaries that are on their way to a Titanic-like cruise ship called the Argonautica in order to steal and blow it up.  The thing they weren't counting on was a monster with snake tentacles that sucks humans dry.  It's basically a rip off of Alien where a monster traps everyone in a sealed off location and takes them out one by one.

This ain't no pleasure cruise

The monster is pretty well designed and cool looking and some of the deaths are pretty brutal.  Beyond that, the film fails on most other levels.  The comic relief is provided by the ship's engineer, who whines his way through the movie and spits out lame joke after lame joke.  In fact they all crack shitty one liners no matter how bad the situation.  There is practically no tension here because at no time can this film be taken seriously - whatsoever.

Women and children first. You're next.

 If you know the work of Sommers, then you will know what to expect from his movies, aside from the fact that they lessen in quality every time a new one is released.  He also did Van Helsing which was a tremendous box office bomb as was this film.  Although to his credit he did very well with The Mummy.

Admittedly you must like B-movie fluff to enjoy this but then it has no pretensions other than escapism.  There isn't really much else to say about this film. No great science here. No factual based story....just have fun, eat popcorn.

Now what?

 Trivia:

Famke Janssen's character Trillian is named after the Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy character of the same name. Although here Trillian is her actual name, in Hitch-Hiker's it's short for Tricia McMillan. 

Claire Forlani was cast as Trillian St. James. She even started shooting, but walked out after just three days, due to creative differences with director Stephen Sommers. The part subsequently went to Famke Janssen.

The "Chinese M1 L1 triple-pulse assault rifles" used by the pirates are actually heavily modified Calico M-960 submachine guns fitted with 100-round magazines (as opposed to the "thousand-round capacity" mentioned by Hanover). Five non-functional rotating barrels were built around the actual barrel of each Calico and driven by a small electric motor connected to the trigger, so that whenever the gun was fired, it appeared to be firing out of the rotating barrels.

Captain Atherton, played by Derrick O'Connor, was named after cinematographer Howard Atherton.

Harrison Ford turned down the role of Finnegan. The production's budget was then downsized. 

They Seized The World's Richest Ship... But No One's On Board!

Famke Janssen was almost not cast in this movie because the producers felt she was too recognizable from GoldenEye (1995)

In the original script, John Finnegan's catchphrase was "what now?" In the film it was changed to "now what?"

One of the few films that has no heroes or heroines. Finnegan and his crew are hired for villainous reasons. Trillian is a thief. The mercenaries are simply mercenaries.

Stephen Sommers began writing the script, then called "Tentacle", when he worked at Hollywood Pictures in the mid-90s. 

The January 1st, 1996 revised draft of the screenplay lists Robert Mark Kamen as a co-writer.

In the initial scene of the Argonautica Casino there can be seen some old Italian banknotes probably used to portrait an exotic foreign currency; their size is 2000 lire and 1000 lire. These were the smallest banknote sizes at the time, roughly equivalent to 1$ and 50c of 2013 - in 1998 the price of an Italian newspaper was 1200 lire.

Full scream ahead.